The Modular Protocol for Mental Health (MPMH)

Currently, our best psychological treatments for anxiety and mood disorders only focus on individual diagnoses. So, there are separate treatments for Panic Disorder, or Depressive Disorder, or Social Anxiety, etc. These 'diagnosis-specific' treatments work well for people whose problems fit neatly into a single diagnosis. However, they work far less well for people with complex problems involving multiple diagnoses, and 50% of patients fail to respond well to these existing treatments. The purpose of this study is to test a new psychological treatment for anxiety and mood problems (the Modular Protocol for Mental Health \[MPMH\]). Instead of focusing on any single diagnosis, MPMH combines the best treatment techniques into 10 modules to target problems common across all of the different mood and anxiety diagnoses (e.g., intense emotions, negative thinking, upsetting memories, distressing habits). MPMH should therefore be a better treatment for the large numbers of individuals whose problems do not fit neatly into a single diagnosis and for whom any treatments targeting a single diagnosis would leave significant difficulties unaddressed.